The place to see where I am/what I'm doing if you find yourself interested in either of those things

Friday, February 5, 2016

2016-02-05 Email

It was sad walking away for me too. I mostly did not cry until the end of the day and a Tongan district sang God Be With You Til We Meet Again and I thought how long it is until we are together again and now my eyes water but I am happy.

It's not just me but also other sisters have said the same thing which is that it feels like it's been two years already, not two days. Like, how are we not done with our missions yet. I can't explain to you how this happens but I can't even remember what we did exactly on the first day because it feels like it was a year ago. I had to pull out my schedule just now.

Today I have tons of time (technically I'm supposed to be studying right now but we were allowed "some" time to write you guys before Thursday which is my P-day so I am taking some liberty with the phrase "some" so I will use this email to explain in how things are organized and what we do.

So I'll just explain my first day, they took my bags and my helper and I walked all over like it was a maze to check in then get books then go to my dorm then go to class. The dorms house 3 bunkbeds. Me and my companion share with four Hermanas so they're all going to different spanish speaking missions so we don't see them throughout the day.

Anyways they waste ZERO time here. So first day, within an hour I was in class. The first thing I did was meet my teacher who (I promise this is purely for the sake of description) a VERY handsome guy, he's 22 and he goes to BYU obv because most of the teachers are young adults going to BYU who have gone to Italian missions. So he's from AZ but he looks very much Italian with the skin and hair. Anyways, he's very nice and he speaks .1% english to us. But it's crazy because literally we've been here for two full days and WE ALREADY HAD TO TEACH SOMEONE A FULL 20-MINUTE LESSON IN PURE ITALIAN but you know what, sorella Poletz and I just did it and now we're writing you so obviously we've learned a lot already (okay but yes we used books that have all the info but that's not to say we aren't learning anything cuz we are. I carry my dictionary with me everywhere so I can look up words to speak mostly Italian and learn new things outside of class)

So the first of class we took a little intro quiz idk what it was for and then watched a like, 30 minute video on the gym which was the most pointless thing of my life I was like, is this the most essential??

After that I went back to class (it's an older brick building, like the entire campus is, and we have white cinderblock walls with a whiteboard and italian flag facing one another on the walls with a window that's entirely blocked by a bush on a third wall haha) and there was just my teacher and another sorella there and the first thing I did was have a conversation with my teacher (fratello sloan) on the whiteboard come

ciao

ciao

come sta

benne e tu

benne grazie

di dove sei

blah blah blah

when I sat down I was looking at a little packet I had with my key because a third and fourth girl now had come in and done that and realized they were companions so after I checked I realized that the girl that was already in there was my companion. Suprise! She's french!! alors nous parlons francais beacoup parce que she doesn't speak perfect english so it's hard for her to understand some things so I try and dictate in french so she understands. She's 19 and she's small and cute from northern france, her dad is a farmer. I'm so glad we are companions, she is so nice to me and I try to be nice to her like it's only been two days and we have this habit of always opening the door for each other and when we go get food we always get two forks/spoons/knives and give the one to the other and just little stuff like that. And of course being trilingual is really fun for us, but less fun and more of a necessity.

Okay she's done writing so I'll wrap it up. We are separated into districts and then branches. For both, everyone is learning the same language but not everyone is going to the same mission. You go to class with your district. Your 100 lbs of study material stay in your class always. When your teacher isn't there and you're doing personal study, you don't study in the dorms, you study in the class. Your class is only your district. So fratello sloan teaches me and sorella poletz, another girl companionship, and a trio of elders. Branch is larger and we spend Sundays together and Tuesday devotionals are a thing I guess.

I'm not like 100% assimilated into the MTC yet, it's just easy because most of the time is spent studying and sorella poletz and I have a lot of fun and are really driven to learn Italian. I hope (idk about her) that by the time we are at the airport, my italian is better than my french and her italian is better than her english.